Arlene Holmes, mother of accused Aurora movie theater gunman James Holmes, recently self-published her prayers in a diary-like 116-page book titled “When the Focus Shifts: The Prayer Book of Arlene Homes 2013-2014.” Although not much is revealed about her son in the text, it does reveal some insights into her post-shooting grief and guilt. She prays for her son’s victims every day, speaking each one’s name aloud, and she divulges her musings on subjects like courtroom observations and mental illness. The book was published less than a month before the start date of her son’s trial. Holmes faces the death penalty for the alleged murder of a dozen people in a movie theater in 2012. “People think [my son] is a monster,” Holmes wrote, “but he has a disease that changed his brain.” Some relatives of her son’s victims are critical of the timing of her book, and believe it’s an attempt to sway potential jurors.

This is a disgrace. Where is the UK foreign office in all of this? Aras Amiri now joins another British-Iranian, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in notorious Evin prison on bogus charges. @foreignofficehttps://t.co/DJX0knhdot